I want to watch anything I want to watch on my big screen (instantly) or iPhone (easily). Believe it or not, I am almost there. Today I’ll focus on the big screen. After building a Windows 7 HTPC with HDMI networked to 1TB NAS drive via LAN, I am nearly there. While waiting for the tuner manufacturers to sort out their CableCard or alternate means of replacing the set top box (slated for this year), I have scaled back my cable subscription so that no box is required. I then subscribed to Netflix, which I use to watch movies seamlessly from Windows Media Center (WMC). All that I am missing is live ESPN sports in HD.
How so? I get network TV (HD over clear QAM and analog SD) with a Hauppauge 950Q hybrid tuner. I watch or record shows using this through Windows 7. The WMC wizard detected the tuner and walked me through setting it up. Works great.
Not content with turning my laptop into a home media center, I made the foolish decision to build my own video|music streamer for fun. Not being the brightest bulb, I thought I would just use an old hard drive I had left over from my Ubuntu Server experiment. I wanted to hedge my bets and have a computer with guts to do video editing and transcoding if it proved awkward as an htpc. So instead of the ubiquitous ion nvidia approach, I went with a Phenom II x3 on an Asus motherboard with GPU. The ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard has the 785G chipset for easy jujitsu on any high definition graphics. I plan to stuff this into a hecCompucase HTPC case.
I love Hulu. Sadly it doesn’t carry about five of the shows I watch on TV.com. TV.com has it over Hulu in that it includes a viewing schedule with just the shows I’ve picked, but unlike Hulu it doesn’t notify me when there is something new or provide direct links to the fullest full episode. TV Guide now is offering a “DVR” service. Really it is a virtual DVR. The service appears to be offering an easy means of accessing media through their viewer as a portal to Hulu and other actual hosts. TV.Guide notifies you when a new episode of your shows is available and their access to shows is immediate. Unlike TV.com, one isn’t require to click the show in the schedule and then hunt down the latest full episode available.
The menu is easy to navigate and attractive. What could be better? Well, it would be better if the view offered high definition. In a random look at two shows I normally view in HD, only SD was offered. I expect they’ll do a better job of preventing people from using backdoor techniques to download the source video very soon. The good news is that now I receive notification when full episodes of all my shows are available for streaming. If you are an early adopter, let me know your experience in the comments. Will this be enough to wean you from the cable/satellite?
Thanks to Wired Science, I learned of a 14 year old boy in a remote African village who should be an inspiration for all of us. William Kamkwamba noted the wind in Malawi and thought he could rig something up to power a light to read by. This boy, who had been forced to drop out of school for lack of the $80 tuition, went to the public library and checked out some books on windmills. What happened after that will surely give everyone a lift. Watch this video and share it. What a great young man.
This story has ties into so many of my values: overcoming adversity, ingenuity, generosity, bootstrap economics, and, of course, environmentalism. (Not to mention my love of the public library system.) Go William!
Today we’ll look at how to capture TV shows and watch them using XBMC. In my second XBMC tutorial I covered how to name and organize directories and files for movies and included a peek at how to organize your media for TV Shows as well. Today we’ll start with getting TV shows onto your computer and then how to set them up for viewing in XBMC.
I have loved Tivo for oh so long. That cute little character has wheedled a small fortune out of my pocket. I was so pleased I purchased a lifetime subscription. Maybe it is the fault of the FCC, maybe of Tivo, and definitely of the cable companies, but with my Tivo HD came the dreaded red dot of “you can’t watch this on your computer.” DRM encryption has been added to our cable broadcasts and most shows can no longer be transferred to you computer using Tivo Desktop. One must now pony up a hideous amount of money for a bigger hard drive on one’s Tivo, buy an external hard drive from the one company Tivo allows, or hack one’s Tivo to archive one’s shows until they can be watched (after having paid both Tivo and the cable company to watch the show!). Click on the picture for details on this issue from Dave Zatz.
I don’t like big government. I don’t like political messages in schools. But what really gets me steamed is people that don’t respect the office of President of the United States. Maybe we didn’t vote for Obama. Well, boo-hoo. President Obama won. He is the President elected by the country almost all of us claim to love. So, why the big stink about him telling kids to stay in school? For those who say he is proselytizing to his political views or indoctrinating kids, I say you’re full of bologna. There is nothing political about telling kids to stay in school. Who doesn’t agree with this? Get serious. The same crowd whining about this would be waving the flag if it was President Bush instead of President Obama. No, the outrage is due to people so cross-eyed with hate that they don’t realize that what they are teaching their children is to disrespect the office of President. What kind of values are those? Lead by example. Either you want a democracy, and the risk of being on the losing side from time to time, or you want a different form of government. Which is it? If you want democracy, then act like it. The example you set for your children today will play a large role in what the future of our system will look like.
You have XBMC installed. You have your folders and files properly arranged and named. If you don’t, please do yourself a favor and go back to the second part of the tutorial to learn how to do this and then do it before trying these steps. It really will save you a lot of grief.
Now, it is time to introduce all that lovely media to their new partner. When I was trying to figure out how to make XBMC work, I spent hours figuring out what I hope to show you in the next few minutes. One basic skill you will need is the ability to navigate around XBMC and it won’t be easy at first. (Using it will be a lot easier than setting it up.) You will need a means of interfacing with XBMC. Controlling XBMC is possible with a remote, mouse, or keyboard.
I have Tivo for TV Shows and iTunes for Music Videos so I’ll focus on Movies in this tutorial. If you love movies as much as I do, I promise the effort to use this will be paid back in spades.
First, let us deal with the folder structure and file name. If you are at all interested in XBMC, you’ve probably experimented with or will experiment with other ways of watching computer-source TV. My goal in arranging media files on my computer is to keep everything in a format that will work no matter whether I am watching|listening via a direct connection between my PC and TV or one through my PS3. I want to listen to music with iTunes (my primary portal) but also with XBMC. To make this happen, I need to organize my folders and files as flexibly as possible. Continue reading XBMC Media Folders and Files Just So
iTunes models a lot of what I want from my PC-on-the-TV experience. It can be tasked to hunt down compatible media and add that to its library. In media-center speak ‘library’ does not refer to the “books” but to the “card catalog.” The library is the database that associates the actual media file with additional data like cover art, genre, artist, etc. If asked, iTunes will then copy all of the media files and arrange them in folders according to “the iTunes way.” It is sort of like hiring a librarian to go into your attic, make copies of all your books, and then shelve them in your den according to the Dewey decimal system. But it gets better. Imagine that some of your books are missing covers or title sheets. The librarian researches the original cover and publisher info and then adds copies of those before shelving the books in the den. Pretty sweet, right? Oh, but there’s more. Let’s say this librarian can answer questions (filter) like, Which of my books were published in New York? What books do I have with the word ‘MacDonald’ in the publication info? The librarian answers you – instantly. Which are romance? Instant answer. Plus, the librarian presents the books that meet your criteria to you in a sexy way. (Insert your own image of what that means here.) Oh, that’s the book you want? Let me read it to you.
Thought you might find this project interesting. I have an old laptop connected to the PC input on my HDTV. I use XBMC or Boxee for viewing my movie archives; Picasa3 for viewing home movies and pictures; iTunes for music through my home theater sound system (and iPhone syncing); and Miro for viewing EZRSS torrents. With TightVNC, I use my netbook as a remote (no satisfaction from my iPhone remote apps except for the Boxee remote). Since I see the laptop only on the big screen, I wanted to easily navigate to the media through the appropriate program or website. So, I made a webpage. Great, except that I couldn’t execute computer programs from it. Converted it to a Powerpoint SlideShow which works, but I don’t have or want Office on my HTPC. Converted HTPC.pss to HTPC.exe and I have an app I’m going to alpha test for a bit. There are links to my computer (standard install locations) for XBMC, Boxee, iTunes, Miro, Tivo Desktop, and Picasa3. On the web I have FindInternetTV, YouTubeXL, RadioTime, last.fm, Pandora, Hulu, Tivo.com, Yahoo! TV Listings, and facebook (for viewing our friends’ pictures). As an iPhone lover, I have inappropriately procured a few of their icons and their basic layout (sans captions). Once I’ve lived with it a bit, added a configuration utility and non-proprietary icons, I hope to sourceforge it. What do you think?
Update 2009 08 20 Tried it on my HTPC without Power Point Viewer and the exe file didn’t work but asked for an Office key. So much for portability. (Not that I’ve given up.)
LSS is a nuts and bolts blog. Written by a geek who loves God, this journal reports my quest for technical perfection, environmental and social justice, and venting whatever else is going through my little pea-pickin' brain at the moment.
If you poke around a little, I'm sure you can find something to tick you off, but you might just find something that helps you, too. The former I consider collateral damage and the latter is my hope.
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I want to watch anything I want to watch on my big screen (instantly) or iPhone (easily). Believe it or not, I am almost there. Today I’ll focus on the big screen. After building a Windows 7 HTPC with HDMI networked to 1TB NAS drive via LAN, I am nearly there. While waiting for the tuner manufacturers to sort out their CableCard or alternate means of replacing the set top box (slated for this year), I have scaled back my cable subscription so that no box is required. I then subscribed to Netflix, which I use to watch movies seamlessly from Windows Media Center (WMC). All that I am missing is live ESPN sports in HD.
